Power Hours

My waitressing job isn't tough. It's even pretty fulfilling and good for my social development. It's also a compressed three hour (sometimes a little longer) shift, which is so much better than running around or standing for an 8-hour shift. On a slow day, I still pull $50.

But damn, it drains physically like I ran a marathon. Not quite tired enough to nap, but not really awake enough to do more than vegetate with Netflix or Hulu. At best, I might sit up to scribble down notes on what I'd like to do when I have more energy.

Well, last night, I printed off and added borders to another 100 business cards. That took about two and a half hours so it wasn't too time-consuming. It was pretty much the slow wait of them printing then folding and perforating, followed by sorting border colors, rolling on tape, cutting excess, rinse repeat. I like the sort of mindlessness of it because it gives me room to daydream or just quiet my thoughts, sort of meditative.

Tomorrow, I'm going to peruse website layouts, pick those out, pick HTML colors (they'll match my business cards; a mix of cream, warm browns, and a dusty purple accent), organize photos, then let Joe do his magic. I was only putting that off until I could test print the business cards, make color adjustments, then decide how the site colors would play into that.

Writing might happen, but really, I'm anxious to finish Totem. Writing is something more natural to step away from but art seems to have a window for whether it will be finished or I'll get distracted by a shinier visual desire.

I'll be ordering a doll base soon, with the hopes of customizing her to look like one of my female characters. It's difficult to find the right male doll parts. They tend to be generic, boyish (rather than masculine adult), and limited, which is why it's much more tempting to customize a female. Now, Iplehouse, one of my absolute favorite BJD manufacturers, sells the most amazing male forms, but I'm not quite in a place where I could display, protect or maintain such expensive dolls so that option is not a short-term goal. If I had the room for a big display cabinet and even more to spend on the base bodies, let alone outfitting them, I'd have two foot tall versions of at least a few of my characters, but for now, I can dream. It's a much higher priority to juggle inexpensive hobbies with my career ambitions than it is to blow every cent on showstopper pieces.

Of course, there's crochet too. I'm still waiting on a few yarn colors to come in the mail so that's on hold until then too. I tend to buy inexpensive but ridiculously soft milk cotton yarn from overseas. Unless I can hit a yarn sale locally, most US companies charge more for less impressive yarn. As much as I love to support local businesses, especially since I'm leery of supporting countries where labor laws are inhumane, yarn is one of those supplies that goes fast and takes a lot for anything but small projects, so it's just as distasteful to spend more for less quality and yardage. Yarn production isn't one of those things that even needs heavy manual labor to produce, just someone to inspect and fix the machines that spin, color and label yarn.

Time to stare at some show I'm only half watching for now. Much to choose from but I have a good idea where to focus my priorities once I've rested.